Exit Strategy
by Neale
Summary: Thought I'd try something different, this is a back story for Sarah and it was intended to be a minor crossover with the Transporter, but this site apparently doesn't recognise that series.


**Thought I'd try something else. Pre-Charah with a Transporter crossover.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters portrayed.**

Ukraine 2006

Sarah spent a while listening for any sign that the soldiers hunting for her were nearby, then went to sit in the back of the cow shed until she could stop shaking. If she managed to get out of this alive, the Andersons were finished, and so was Bryce Larkin!

Things had been getting progressively worse between them since she'd finished their physical relationship, and he'd been getting sloppier each mission, but even so they had still managed to be successful in their mission objectives up until this one. The mission this time was to recover intel from a warlord's dacha in central Ukraine, it was supposed to be a simple in and out, nothing difficult compared to the jobs they'd been doing to date.

They had had no trouble getting into the warlord's dacha under the guise of party guests, though Bryce arced up when Sarah stopped him ramping up the PDA beyond any reasonable or acceptable level, which of course created complications. Once enough of a show had been put on to set the scene, they slipped away for some "private" time to locate the safe. They found the room without any more complications and Sarah handled the security system and got into the safe without too much trouble (except for Bryce pestering her to go back to the way things were) to successfully extract what they were there for. As soon as they had the information they were sent for they headed out, and everything was going well until the guards discovered them (or more to the point saw Bryce as he casually sauntered down the hall) in a part of the dacha that was off limits to guests.

When the guards caught them Bryce drew his gun, which of course ruled out any chance of trying to talk their way out of the situation as the guards started firing at them. As soon as they came under fire Sarah and Bryce both took cover and began shooting back, but it didn't take long before Sarah realised that she was now the only one doing so. When she looked around to see what Bryce was doing, she saw him disappearing around the corner behind her (with the bag). She started to call out to him but another barrage of gunfire made her turn her attention back to the imminent threat in front of her.

She managed to hold out for another ten minutes or so but she knew she was just about out of ammo, so she waited for her chance and threw the one (and only) flashbang grenade she had at the guards the next time they had a lull in the firing (just as they were due to start firing again once they'd changed magazines, to ensure that they would be looking in her direction at the time). That resulted in the affect of the flashbang being maximised and it gave her enough of a chance to break away and run while they were all blinded and stunned.

Bryce had already taken the car they came in and left, so Sarah spent the next couple of hours running, and hiding in the shadows. The warlord's men were combing the streets of the town for them and she saw a patrol at least once every ten to fifteen minutes (sometimes it felt like every five minutes or less), so she had to go to ground when she saw them and stay down until they were well past her each time. That (of course) made her progress very slow (as did raiding a few clothes lines for some less conspicuous clothes), but after she found that the hotel where they'd been staying was overrun with the warlord's men, she eventually found the deserted cow shed on the opposite edge of town to the dacha and hid in there for the night. She slept fitfully through the night (waking at any sound outside) until just before dawn when she slipped out to stow away on one of the farm trucks heading out of town. When she had gotten as far as she was going to that day, stowing away on farm trucks and transport trucks (even if it was only about 300 KM), she found a place to stay for the night and called her superiors for an extraction. She had become used to being abandoned by the people she worked for, but even so she still couldn't believe the response she got from her superiors.

What she was told was that Bryce had reported the previous night that she'd blown the mission, but he'd managed to retrieve the mission objective and get himself out of the Dacha with what they were sent to retrieve. She was also told that all available CIA resources would be needed to ensure that he and the mission objective were extracted safely. She tried to explain what had actually happened but they informed her that her story did not match any of the information that they had been given previously, and with that they disconnected the call. She sat and looked at her phone in disbelief after the call was disconnected, she had just been abandoned and thrown to the wolves and she still had 3-400 KM and at least 3 warlords (with their armies) between her and the nearest safe border. She had been betrayed by both the partner (and lover) who she'd been with for the past two years (watching his back for the whole time), and the people she'd worked for for the past nine years, successfully delivering everything they asked of her, it wasn't looking very likely that she'd be getting out of this one.

About ten minutes after her superiors terminated the call, she received a text from an analyst on the European desk who she'd worked with before, the text just contained a phone number and the instruction "ask for the transporter, you'll need money". She wanted to call to ask what the message meant, but knew that they'd already taken a very big risk just to send her that much, so she couldn't put them into any more risk. She spent the next hour or so going over what her options were, but they kept coming back to that text, it really did look as though if she wanted any chance of getting out of this, the text that she'd been sent (but didn't really understand) was the only option that she had.

Given that she really only had that one option, she dug out the burner phone she kept with her at all times for these types of emergencies and dialled the number that she'd been sent. The woman who answered wasn't too impressed with getting a call that late, but as expected, she was prepared to deal with calls at any time. Sarah was extremely reluctant to give up the name of the person who'd sent her the number and instruction, but given that that was the only way that the woman would agree to deal with her, she was banking on the fact that they would have been expecting it. Obviously the name was known to the woman (Carla, she said to call her), as her tone thawed once she'd heard it and she started talking logistics. She asked what exactly Sarah was after, what the timeframes and potential complications were, where she was, whether she was good for the fee etc. The fact that Sarah had changed to Italian when she heard Carla's accent did help smooth the way. After nearly half an hour on the phone, Carla told her that she had enough to work with and that she'd get back to her when she'd talked to the transporter. She did advise that that call probably wouldn't be until at least 6 in the morning, so she should get some sleep and think about arranging to stay where she was for another day. With that, Sarah ensured that the room was secured as well as it could be, and took Carla's advice.

The phone woke her around six, and she was surprised that she had, actually, slept from the time that they'd finished talking. Carla told her that the transporter had agreed to take the job on, but curfews were applied to the area she was in by the local warlord, so he would have to stay overnight as close to there as possible and would be there at 7:00 AM the next morning. Sarah surprised herself by sighing with relief, and kicked herself for being unprofessional when Carla had obviously heard her, as she asked if she was OK. Sarah assured her that she was and tried to cover her slip by making arrangements with her to get the initial payment transferred to their account, this time managing to cover up her relief that she had enough (just) to cover the fee for this extraction in her private emergency accounts. (When this was over she was going to recover it (and more) from other accounts that she and Bryce both had access to, but that would have to wait until she was out of there as it required more computer facilities than she had available in the middle of the Ukraine.) Once the details had been handled and she'd talked to Carla for a while more (not wanting to admit how much better talking to the other woman made her feel), they wound up the call and she went downstairs to advise the hotel that she was feeling unwell and would be staying another day (using just about all the cash she had with her, but if this transporter came through it would hopefully get her out of this country in one piece), before returning to her room for the day.

The fact that she hadn't been contacted by the CIA since they terminated the call the night before was a pretty clear sign that she'd been burned by the agency, well she pretty much knew that already as Bryce would have almost certainly been extracted before she called them (given that she had been on the run for 24 hours before she had a chance to call for extraction). With that in mind, she'd called for the transporter to take her to a point close to a safe house that she had in Poland that she'd maintained for some time and Bryce didn't know about, the fact that she obviously couldn't trust Bryce now limited her options quite a bit, as most of the emergency plans and resources she had access to at this point were ones that they'd set up together over the past two years. She just hoped that the agency hadn't advised him that she was alive, if so she might still had a chance to clean out the shared accounts and safe deposit boxes and give herself enough to stay off the grid until she could get this cleared up.

The longer Bryce was kept in the dark about her status, the more resources she'd be able to access. If she could get to Langston Graham directly she could hopefully get this mess straightened out, but it would take a lot of effort to get around the supervisors who had burned her on this mission and contact him without their knowing. (She couldn't do any of that while she was stuck here, hiding out with no money, she needed to get back to the States to get to most of her resources, she could access some accounts from her safe house and collect the passports etc she had there, but she needed to get back to the States ASAP to get herself properly set up to do this, so the plan was to get back to the safe house, clean out the shared accounts, fly home to the States and grab whatever she could while she had the opportunity to give her enough resources to get to Langston Graham. Alternatively, if she couldn't get through to Graham or he was in on this, she'd need everything she could get her hands on to stay completely off the grid for as long as possible, but she knew that that would give her a few years at most, if the agency came after her they'd get her sooner or later.)

Between trying to plan her way out of this situation and catching up on the sleep she'd missed over the past couple of days, the twenty five hours between her phone call from Carla and her scheduled meeting with the transporter went faster than she had expected. She'd rinsed the clothes she had and hung them up to dry in the shower during the day, so she had clean(ish) clothes to wear after she had a shower in the morning. Given that the warlords' people were probably still looking for her, and they'd be working their way West if they had any sense (where else would she go?), she didn't want to spend any more much time outside than she had to, so she didn't leave until after 6:30 to make the 20 minute walk to the rendezvous point with the transporter. He turned up at precisely on 7:00 in a big black Audi and greeted her with the agreed code phrases, once she'd replied accordingly he unlocked the door and she jumped (almost literally) into the back of the car. She caught his amused glance in the mirror and was about to say something to him when that look changed to sympathy (or empathy, she had buried her emotions so much over the past nine years she hardly recognised the ones that "normal" people used any more) and he asked "In a tight spot?" Unable to speak, she just nodded and turned to look out the window as she tried to compose herself. She was surprised that he was English, given that he was obviously based on the continent, and if she hadn't been desperately trying to hold herself together to get out of this alive she would have found him quite attractive, but after being screwed over and left for dead by the last attractive man she'd had anything to do with (Bryce), that was the last thing on her mind at the moment.

The transporter drove without speaking and gave her the space she needed for quite a while, checking her regularly in the mirror to see how she was doing. It was only when she'd managed to settle herself down that he spoke again to confirm the details of where they were going, and ask whether she had a clean passport that they could get her across the borders with. When the answer to the passport was "not really", they stopped in a small town long enough for her to change her hair colour and get some pictures taken (to add to a Polish woman's passport that he had with him). It wasn't a perfect job, but it should be good enough for the minor border crossings that they would be taking, and it was certainly far better than anything she could have arranged for herself at that point.

Over the few hours that it took to get out of the Ukraine they started to talk, Frank (she noted his hesitation before he told her his name, obviously he didn't normally share that with people) was a good listener, and he obviously knew about the business, the insights he made couldn't have come from anyone who just knew the criminal world. Frank was flirting with her a little, but he could see that she was going through a lot at the moment and he was something that she hadn't met in a long time, an honourable man, so he didn't push anything, he just listened, gave her (quite good) advice where she asked and made her laugh, which was exactly what she needed just then.

The route that Carla had mapped out for them was designed to get them out of the Ukraine as quickly as possible, so they took the shortest route to the Moldova border, then through Romania and Hungary to Slovakia, and hence up into Poland from there. It meant that the trip took nearly twice as long as it would have if they had gone directly to Poland, but it halved the time that they'd be forced to stay in the Ukraine, so Sarah wasn't begrudging the longer trip or higher costs, it got her out of the country that much quicker.

At one roadside cafe where they had stopped for coffee, a patrol from the local warlord pulled up as they were about to leave because they saw the foreign plates on the Audi. They were probably just planning on taking the car and her (once they saw her), but whether they had identified her or not, the situation went to shit very quickly when they tried to grab her. What happened next confirmed that Frank had indeed been in the business, because he was almost as good as she was, between them it took less than 2 minutes to take out the eight man squad, grab a few weapons and take off, and the guys they'd been were up against hadn't been bad at all. They had managed to prevent any weapons going off and finished the men off quietly, stuffing them back into their 4WDs as quickly as possible to get them out of view. Given that no obvious alarm bells were going off, it was possible that no-one had seen them, but they got out of there as quickly and quietly as possible just to be safe, in hope that they'd manage to get across the border before there were any other incidents.

They got to the border and did the border crossing into Moldova (after ditching the weapons just before the border) without any more trouble, but Moldova was pretty much still in the pocket of the Ukraine, so they didn't start breathing easier until they were halfway across Romania. By the time they'd skipped across Romania, Hungary and Slovakia it was about 9:00 PM. Frank dropped her off where she'd asked, only about ten minutes walk from her safe house. When she kissed him goodbye she was half tempted to take him back there for the night, but as she'd already surmised, he was a good man, and he knew what she'd been through over the past few days (both professionally and personally) so he wasn't about to abuse her vulnerability. Instead they exchanged their full names (in itself a major commitment for people like them) and phone numbers and he left her with best wishes that she get through this OK, and that she let him know when she was safe if she was so inclined. Sarah watched him drive away before walking up to her safe house and letting herself in.

After she'd had a shower and heated up something to eat (there was nothing but canned goods and pasta in the cupboard, she went years between when she visited this safe house), Sarah booted up the computer to get into the shared accounts that she had with Bryce. The tech guys had done her favours and set her computer up with anonymous proxy accesses, so she could get onto the net without being easily traced back to where she was, and the fact that Poland had terrible wired networks so it was mostly supported by mobile networks helped (as that made it that much harder anyone to home in on her location), but she still followed the instructions she'd been given and rebooted the computer and changed anonymous proxy server between each connection she made, to cover her tracks.

Luckily Bryce either hadn't been told that she was still alive or he was just sloppy, as the shared funds they had were still untouched, so she quickly initiated a string of transfers through various dummy accounts to get the money into her private accounts, leaving just enough in the shared accounts to prevent the accounts being closed. As soon as she had the money in her accounts she booked the tickets for the next morning to get her back to the States as quickly as possible via the lesser watched routes, planning to fly into Canada and slip across the border. It would have been better via Mexico, but time was of the essence in this, and she had to get to the resources they had up around the Washington area before Bryce or someone else did. Once she had the tickets booked and had cleaned what she could out of the shared accounts, she went to bed, daring to feel a bit more hopeful than she had for a few days now.

At 10:00 PM the next night Sarah slipped back into the US of A, she'd flown into Canada on the passport of a Canadian business woman who flew back and forth across the Atlantic on a regular basis, then went to a safe house she had there to change into an American "alternative lifestyle" woman who had friends and family across the border in Canada, so she shuttled back and forth all the time. (Both the personas and the safe house were ones that she shared with Carina, so they shared the activities to maintain them, and they were both "naturally" redheads. The main worry with that was keeping a log of the customs and border officers they dealt with so that they could try to avoid going to the same officers too often and hence risk them asking about minor differences, they did make a point of changing a hairstyles and colour all the time to intentionally switch up their appearances to forestall those issues.) The main thing was that the covers were working well, and she got back into the States without raising any eyebrows, and she went to another safe house that she shared with Carina on the US side to get a good night's sleep and change into the identities she needed to access the safe deposit boxes and other shared resources she had there.

It took Sarah a couple of weeks to harvest what they had in the safe deposit boxes, safe houses etc, she left Bryce's IDs etc there (to give him less excuse to try and come after her), but took anything she could use. When she had collected everything that she could without exposing herself, she took off to another long term safe house she had that no-one else knew anything about and started planning the best way to get in contact with Langston Graham. She knew that by now she would be listed as MIA and/or rogue, because she'd been off air for three weeks, but she also knew that Graham had been depending on her since he'd recruited her at 16 when he put her father in prison, so if anyone was likely to believe her story, it would be him. He'd also have access to pull the records that were used to justify burning her in the Ukraine, and she certainly wanted to see them!

Sarah set up reconnaissance on Graham to confirm his movements and check for any tails or protective details he had. Eventually she decided that the only way to see him safely would be at night in his own home, as he had too many people around him any other time, so that was what she did. She set things up one night, and disabled the security systems to let her slip into his study the next night while he was having dinner and wait for him to come up to do a couple of hours work as he always did. It said a fair bit that he wasn't surprised to see her, and didn't try to draw his weapon, he just demanded a report of what happened. When she gave her version of what happened on the mission and afterwards, he let her tell the full story before he showed the official report, that she'd blown the mission and been captured, then Bryce Larkin disabled the security systems and extracted the mission objective from the safe and got out, calling for extraction later that night from another town and giving his report. There was also another note that someone claiming to be her had contacted the agency twenty four hours later but the story had been discounted because the details were obviously wrong. The "official" finding on the note was that the ineffective agent who'd allowed herself to be captured had broken under interrogation (or just gave everything up in an attempt to save herself), and that the call was just an attempt to trap local CIA resources. Sarah could hardly contain herself when she read the "official" report that Bryce Larkin had disabled the security systems, cracked the safe and got out with the mission objective against all odds while the "ineffective" female who was with him allowed herself to be captured and cracked at the drop of a hat. She quietly took note of the names on the report, vowing to herself to do something to those "men" when she had a chance, but all she overtly did at that point was look at Langston Graham and ask him whether be believed the "official" version, and that it had been Bryce who disabled the system to achieve the mission objective (subtly looking at the window of Graham's office where she had successfully managed to disable (without detection) the best security that the CIA could set up to break into the home office of a Deputy Director of the CIA)?

Neither the look or the inference were lost on the Director and he chuckled as he said no, he didn't believe the official version, and he would look into it. When he went on with "however", though, Sarah was less happy with the way things were headed. He pointed out that the official records DID currently state that she'd failed on the mission and had allowed herself to be captured, so it would take a while to clear her record. Therefore he proposed that she take a mission in Hungary (handing her the mission details folder) with a handler (assuring her when she bristled that it was just a temporary measure until he managed to get her name cleared) and give him a few weeks to get things straightened out.

Sarah didn't like taking a massive step back like this after she'd been screwed over by her ex-partner and her supervisors, but decided that she'd have to do this if that was what it took to get things straightened out, so she agreed. With that she left notes with the Director to get his security system fixed properly (to prevent someone else doing what she just did) and went to pack for Budapest.


End file.
